Multilingual communication in texting: code switching as a way of showing membership of a globalized community

E. Morel & S. Pekarek Doehler2013, Vol. XVIII-2, pp. 29-43

This article explores the forms and the functions of code-switching (CS) in written communication with mobile phones. We present the major results emanating from research on CS in the SMS communication, and an analysis of a large corpus of French (Switzerland) text messages. The analysis identifies the texters hybrid language uses, and resorting to a limited number of CS types, typically morphosyntactically non complex, and related to internationalized words or formulae, associated to a limited number of domains which bare ‘cool’ and/or cosmopolitan connotations. These results suggest that CS is a resource by means of which participants display membership in a translinguistic and globalized community.